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The iPhone Effect

iPhone, iPhone, iPhone. If you were born yesterday you’d be forgiven for thinking that the iPhone is the first smartphone ever released and in a way you’d be right. From my experience of Palm OS, Windows Mobile and Symbian based smartphones, none of them were that smart. They all had some big gotchas that seriously limited their usability, mainly when I had to get out the stylus for something that shouldn’t have needed it in a how-the-hell-did-this-get-past-testing moment.

The iPhone may be the first smartphone that is actually smart. Like every Apple product, it does what it’s supposed to do very well indeed. I’ve yet to use an iPhone so I wouldn’t like to comment, but the overwhelming number of positive reviews must outweigh the so-called Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Effect, although the most interesting reviews will be the ones after a month of use.

With a new product, especially something completely different like the iPhone, there will always be a honeymoon period, when the novelty is still there. The length of the honeymoon period depends on the initial wow-factor you get from the device, and people are getting pretty big wows from the iPhone, as they should. It’s a big revolutionary step towards a better smartphone and its good to see Apple bringing out something new in the market rather than the same old shit with a different model number.

The iPhone is drawing comparisons with the revolution that was the Internet, which is saying something. Nothing much in the last ten years has had as big an impact as the Internet on our lives, and if the iPhone gets updates to fill the gaps of the current version, it may well be the computer of the future.